This article was published in Sanlian Life Weekly, No. 29, 2019, and the original title was "I want happiness, I want to control my destiny"
Lead Writer/Chen Sai
Stills from the sixth season of "The Proud Wife"
A "virtuous wife" counterattacked in life
The TV series "The Proud Wife" has allowed the audience to witness the evolution of Alicia from a housewife to a powerful professional woman in 7 years.
In the beginning, her fate was imposed on her. She was originally a senior student in the law department, gave up her career after marriage, and willingly became a good wife and mother. More than 10 years after her husband taught her son, her husband in a high position suddenly exposed a sex scandal and was imprisoned on suspicion of corruption. As a result, her past perfect life collapsed overnight, falling into a desperate situation, but the desperate situation also stimulated her strong will to survive - her husband's legal fees had to be paid, rent had to be paid, two adolescent children had to be raised, a strong mother-in-law had to cope, and the injured dignity had to be restored.
When life encounters great changes, we usually have two reactions, one is to realize our own smallness and limitations, so as to have a great sense of awe of fate, and the other is to fight back, and from then on try to keep fate firmly in our own hands, Alicia obviously belongs to the latter. Because I myself belong to the former, I have a great admiration for her courage in the face of fate.
In particular, although it is a sudden storm of life, this storm has built in the similar troubles of every female person to middle age - the problem of money, the problem of children, the responsibility of family and work, insecurity, frustration, self-doubt and compromise, the health, energy and presence of gradual decline, so as a middle-aged woman, we have more sympathy for her life counterattack.
Returning to the workforce 13 years later as a junior lawyer and the wife of a well-known fallen politician, Alicia's situation is as difficult as you can imagine. But at least in the first few seasons, Alicia has fully demonstrated the strength, wisdom, dignity, and extreme prudence and shrewdness of a woman in the face of adversity, especially complex power relations.
Someone once asked the female writer Margaret Atwood why her female characters were always so suspicious, and she retorted: "That's not suspicious." That's an awareness of their situation. In a power imbalance relationship, how to know yourself is a difficult task. ”
Obviously, in Alicia's workplace environment, this imbalance of power is ubiquitous. Therefore, in order to gain an advantage in various negotiations and trials, in addition to working as hard as male lawyers, female lawyers often have to know how to use their "female characteristics", but some people are forced to do so, and some people are happy. For example, the young female lawyer named Nancy in the play is good at pretending to be pure, naïve, and innocent, and always succeeds in winning the sympathy of male judges and judges.
Patty, a middle-aged female lawyer, does not hesitate, even shamelessly, use her identity as a pregnant woman and mother. According to Will, her reproductive speed was barbaric. Having children seems to have become a necessity for a profession. When she is pregnant, she uses pregnancy as a shield, and when she is not pregnant, she uses her baby as a weapon.
Alicia's best friend and investigator, Klinda, often walks the gray line between morality and law, using beauty and sex to obtain intelligence. Even Diane, the show's most admirable strong woman, revealed in a conversation with Alicia that she first came out in the legal profession only because the partners needed a "woman" to decorate the façade. Even when she became famous, as a title partner of a large law firm, when she was nominated for judge, it was still first and foremost because of her femininity, not because of her ability and dignity.
Stills from the fourth season of "The Proud Wife"
The "sage" Alicia disdains the use of these gender means to manipulate people's hearts, but she actually has a secret weapon as a woman, and the identity of the "good wife" is her secret weapon. "Saint" is the nickname given to her by the media, on the surface it seems to praise her as a good wife for the sacrifices she has made for her husband and family, but secretly it is a kind of ridicule, this kind of husband can actually endure, why not hurry to kick away?
Many people can't understand why she has always chosen to maintain a husband-and-wife relationship with her husband, Peter, and be a "good wife" in the public eye, rather than with her lover and boss, Will Gardner, and enjoy true love and freedom.
It is clear that Will represents another possibility of life for her, but there are also great risks in this possibility. Will is a good lawyer, but it's what makes him unpredictable and elusive. The love relationship between a man and a woman inherently involves a power structure, not to mention that he is her boss, and there are too many uncertainties about how to maintain his power and maintain his own integrity in this relationship.
Compared to Will, her husband, or the privilege that her marriage brought her, was something she could be sure of. Even in the first season of her husband's imprisonment, every time she stepped into the courtroom, everyone knew who she was and whose wife she was. Her husband's political connections and reputation, for better or worse, provided her with certain special channels, even if they were often stained and flawed. Moreover, her attitude towards these stains and flaws is becoming more and more tolerant. What is truth, what is lies, what is justice, what is injustice, as long as the logic is self-consistent, it seems that it can all be justified.
From this point of view, Alicia has become more and more like her husband Peter—a mastery of the workings of power, a mastery of the manipulation of legal tools, and in the process, she may have understood and identified more with peter's speculation and compromise in this system of power. Of course, she herself was reluctant to admit it, preferring to believe that she was an innocent victim, even when she had unknowingly gone from victim to predator.
There was also a strong sense of guilt when she first took the initiative to use her husband's relationship to keep her job, but she quickly forgave herself – after all, this is life.
She was equally quick to be relieved when she found out that she had initially gotten the job by squeezing out another, more senior competitor through Will's connections—after all, it was the adult world.
As she climbs the ladder of power, the more compromises she makes, and the more comfortable she is at ease with her own compromises. When her husband was released from prison or even became governor, it was already a matter of course that she used his connections to win over and defend her clients. It wasn't until she left the law firm and took Will's most valuable client that he tried in anger to pull her out of her victim complex: You're such a jerk, you don't even know how much you are. ”
Canadian writer Margaret Atwood
How much would you like to know about yourself?
We often think that self-knowledge is a gift that comes with age. As you get older and more experienced, you will naturally understand who you are and what you want. But this is not the case. It is easy to examine someone else's life from the outside. But once it comes to yourself, the truth about yourself, how much do you really want to know?
This is the place where I feel most shocked every time I watch "The Proud Wife". Because you will find that, unconsciously, the set of rules of the judicial system that Alicia became familiar with after returning to the workplace has been internalized as part of her dealings with people. In her thinking court, like a courtroom in the real world, the conviction of a crime depends not only on evidence, argumentative skills, but also on the management of information. There is some evidence that can be highlighted, some evidence that can be ignored, and some evidence that cannot be presented as evidence in court.
In court, she learned to distance herself from the truth, making sure that what she knew, no more and no less, was enough to "passionately represent the interests of her clients." Like in the end, with regard to Peter's corruption allegations, she had no concern at all about whether he was guilty or not.
Similarly, she chose to distance herself from the truth of her life, making sure that what she knew was no more and no less, as long as she found a legitimate basis for her actions. She was a good lawyer and always defended herself in the best possible way.
It's only in the final scene of season seven, in a surreal dialogue (her conversation with Will's ghost), that she creates an introspective loophole for herself.
She asked him, "Do you really hate me?" ”
He said, "Of course. (It was her acknowledging his hatred.) ）
He then reminded her that she loved him because the few people who walked were always the most charming; and that she missed their love because it never happened.
Similarly, it was Will's ghost who reminded her, "You know so little about yourself." ”
Here, she finally admits that many times she is looking for all kinds of excuses not to know her true self, because self-perception is dangerous and comes at a price. Knowing oneself means being open to the truth about oneself, including the dark side of human nature. If there really is an absolute moral court, and all the evidence is presented, each of us will be guilty, we are all selfish, vain, cowardly, dishonest. As Alain De Botton said, "If one has not discovered his own madness, the journey of self-knowledge has not yet begun." ”
This is the charm of Alicia's character, whose selective cognition or selective ignorance of the self inspires our doubts about ourselves. How do we deal with information about ourselves? To what extent, like Alicia, we selectively amplify, selectively ignore, and selectively justify our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors? Do we really have to know and acknowledge the whole truth about ourselves? Or is a certain degree of self-deception a better and smarter approach?
What exactly do you want?
In one episode of the sixth season, a peer asks the heroine, Alicia, "What do you want?" ”
She replied: "I want happiness, I want to control my destiny." ”
There are two things in the play that have a wonderful connection to Alicia's happiness. First, her clothes became more and more sophisticated, more and more fashionable, and clothing became a powerful weapon for her to maintain her identity and self-confidence.
Second, she drank more and more. Every time she went back to her little apartment, drunk alone, across the screen, we could feel that sense of loneliness. She once explained that even as a housewife, she likes to drink a little wine at the end of each day, but since returning to work, it is the only ritual that calms her at the end of a busy day. Here, wine becomes a metaphor for the anxiety characteristic of professional women. She drinks because life is difficult—not necessarily the hardships of survival, not necessarily the misfortunes of tragedy, but the disappointment, pain, and disillusionment that are trapped in the trivialities of everyday life and are powerless to get rid of.
Actress Juliana Margaret said in an interview that she wears a wig every time she shoots so that when she leaves the set, she can "take" the role of Alicia off her. But what overwhelmed her was not Alicia's strength, but her sadness.
Supposedly, this woman seems to have gotten everything, wealth, power, love, children, and sexual charm in middle age, but in the end she finds that these are not what she wants. So what exactly does she really want?
The biggest regret of Alicia's life seems to be Will's death. Or rather, she chose not her love, but marriage. But at least in their extramarital affair, you didn't feel like she was treating the relationship as love, but more like a rebellious gesture, a way to declare independence.
Over the course of 7 years, we've watched Alicia make all sorts of choices, good or bad, sane, impulsive, but all in order to take control of her own life. She became bolder and more and more aggressive, no longer living for the expectations of others, but for herself. Previously, her affair with Will had been filled with anxiety, temptation, and guilt, especially for her children. But in the seventh season of her affair with Jason, she has completely let herself go, even flirting in public at the restaurant. As she said to her rival Louis Canning: "For the first time in my life, I don't have to listen to anyone, I am what I am." ”
But what does it mean to live for yourself?
Her mother, Veronica, was a woman who lived entirely on her own mind, could speak without any barriers, cheated without guilt, and hurt others without knowing it. This is clearly not her life template.
Her mother-in-law was the opposite, a woman who lived entirely for her son, and even less did she please her.
The funniest thing is that in the final season, her son Zack brought back a fiancée and issued a new feminist manifesto as soon as they met: "Some people think that it is a step backwards to stand next to men, but feminism means that women can do whatever they want to do – even if all she wants to do is stand by her husband's side and be a virtuous wife." 」 ”
The writers refused to give Alicia a happy ending. She admits that she doesn't love the investigator named Jason, and while he's sexy and charming, he's too shallow and too childish. For her, he was at best a consolation prize, a lonely solution rather than a source of happiness.
The apartment she once loved was now cold and desolate. She even withdrew from her motherhood. Faced with her son's decision to drop out of school to spend time with his fiancée in Paris, her reaction was: "Let him make his own mistake." ”
She personally ruined her friendship with Diane. Together, they could have opened a female-dominated law firm, and Diane had been her strongest ally, her ideal for life.
Seven years ago, the show started with a slap and now ends with a slap. The last time she stood by her husband's side, but this time, she didn't stand to the end. In the same empty aisle, Diane stood in front of her, giving her a hard slap for her previous betrayal in court. This slap reminds us of seven seasons ago, when she first appeared, a younger, more innocent woman gave her husband a slap.
The screenwriter said Alicia's education was a tragedy. Diane's last slap was a "wake-up call" to wake her up, and in 7 years, she went from victim to perpetrator. For her own benefit, she can hurt others in the way she was hurt.
But after receiving Diane's slap (as she did at the beginning of the play, after she slapped her husband in the face), she once again straightened her clothes and walked out with her head held high.
The action of tidying up the placket and hiding emotions is very familiar to us. And the strange confusion in her eyes reminded me of a conversation she had had with her husband's presidential campaign manager, Ms. Ruth.
Alicia: "I used to think I knew what life was like, but now I find that I don't have a clue. ”
Ruth: "Cherish that moment." When you realize that you don't know life, that's the truth. ”
Alicia: "Do you think you'll be happier?" If you chose to go left or right, up or down. ”
Ruth: "No, you can't control your destiny. It's all in your genes. Can't change. ”
Alicia: "You mean, whatever I do, or don't do, I'm destined to be here?" ”
Ruth: "Maybe not here, but it's pretty much the same place." Every fork in life has a cliff. No matter how you walk, take the road that few people take, you will still go to that cliff. ”
At that time, she did not understand that happiness and controlling fate were contradictory to some extent, and that the rudder of the mind was too tightly controlled, but it would lose its direction.